Ken MacLeod

Quotes

1. It had long been established in the Civil Worlds that public business was to be transparent, and personal business opaque; but it was as well recognised that the two would always have a turbulent interface, and that the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee.

   p. 136

2. 

   Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least.

   p. 51

3. 

   She knew about these asteroids, of course. It was because she had classified them in the wrong mental category that she hadn’t thought of them.

   p. 249

4. 

   “I take small interest in politics,” he said. “The subject repels me.”

   p. 232

5. 

   It saddened him that military technology was so much more advanced than he’d ever imagined.

   p. 122

6. 

   When you’d lived long enough, she’d sometimes reflected, when certain habits had become ingrained no matter what refreshment of the neural pathways the immortality genes could bestow, ethics and etiquette became ever less distinct. Hitherto the involuntary equation had read one way, in disproportionate pangs of conscience over a small breach of manners. Now the terms had been inverted, and she felt over the Council majority’s horrible, criminal, potentially murderous mistake the sort of acute embarrassment that might have been appropriate for some ghastly faux pas. Dreadfully sorry, I’m such a ditz about these nuclear attack protocols...

   p. 326

That’s all the quotes.

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